I understand. I keep hoping too.
But instead of hoping that <a particular Democrat/Republican du jour> will save us all (yeah, yeah, THIS election is the most important ever and we CAN’T let the other guys win this time! …Just like every election), I keep hoping that voters will wake up to their power, and accountability.
I’ve seen the inside of that two-headed monster we call “the two party system;” let me tell you how it works.
Things don’t just happen from the top-down as you may imagine. It really starts in your neighborhood, where the Precinct Committeeman works hard to drum up votes on the understanding that status quo politicians “dance with the one that brung ya.” That means that if your guy wins, your teenager gets a nice summer job on the Highway Department. If your work gets noticed by somebody higher up, maybe your business gets a fat new contract with the State of Indiana. Maybe you’ll even land a job as a DC fat cat yourself.
What, you think it’s only on DC’s K-Street that corruption happens?
No, it starts right at the bottom and works up. Waaay down at the bottom. I’ll get back to that later.
Anyway, the whole of our Great Golden Calf “two party system” is based upon corruption. Special Deals for Special People, and only a very few of us can be special. It is a system that’s based upon selling out. It’s theft from the many for the benefit of a few. It’s fearmongering and doomsaying to make you so scared and angry and …dependent, that you’ll keep voting for the ones who always find new ways to divide one person against another for money, power, education, infrastructure, bombs (etc., etc., et cetera…) - black v white, gay v straight, man v woman, whatever against whoever…(etc., etc., et cetera…)
That is the Two Party System; and you’re getting it good and hard. From the bottom, up.
And while I’m talking about who’s sold out, let’s cut to the real heart of the matter. Who, really, has sold out more than any lobbyist, politician, minion, union thug or shyster tycoon?
Well, what’s Social Security? What’s Medicare?
Sure, the banksters get their bailouts. Unions and corporations get special rights, privileges and tax breaks that you pay for. Taxpayers subsidize illegal aliens, abortions in China, wars and rumors of war all over the globe…but there’s a hook in taxpayers that makes all that OK, right? They have a big, fat hook in us all that we just can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/mustn’t pull free.
If you’ve studied the numbers, history and prognosis at all, you know who I think has fundamentally, thoroughly, smugly and defensively sold out.
So tell me; what will you do when that promise of OPM (Other People’s Money) is finally pulled away? What will you do when that game is over, and all that is left is the most powerful, heavily armed, secretive and maybe even most corrupt government of all time?
You won’t vote anymore. That game will be over too.
You’ll still be able to choose how you’d like to live your life. All people always choose that. But your choices will be a lot harder than they are now.
Yes, I know how this is likely to turn out.
Voters will, as always, vote for the same power structures they have chosen all their lives and look for somebody else to blame for it. They’ll grumble and complain and whine, or just stay home saying “it’s too late,” or “my vote won’t matter.”
That will be their choice. They will choose to let the corruption and stupid default human weakness drain away our collective peace, prosperity, security and freedom.
And that will be, once again, an inexcusably stupid choice.
OK, I can’t claim to be better than any other flawed human being. Even if I were elected to the US Senate and started working toward constitutional rule of law, I personally wouldn’t fix anything. It would still be voters who’d accomplish what can be accomplished. I’d be only a medium of voters’ new choice, a new direction. I’d represent a (finally) different Will Of The People; a directive that the marble pedestals of entrenched political power must at last be smashed. I’d represent a communal, statewide decision to replace lawlessness and endless violence with law, order, liberty and justice for all. …For all (not just a few).
So far, you know, your Two Party votes have said, only, “attaboy…keep doin’ it to us just as you’ve always done it.”
Can we at least discuss this?
Please, if you can get a group of people together, invite me to chat with you about this. Ask your media to cover all the choices on the ballot (not just two). Try to sponsor a candidate forum or debate (don’t take a flat NO for an answer…candidates should show up for job interviews!).
I already said that people always have a choice in how they’d like to live. That is absolutely true. But don’t fool yourself about the situation we’re in today.
Today, your choices are easily made.
But read a history book to see just how precious and rare that is.
Don’t blow it again.
